Ireland! You are amazing, beautiful, lovely, what a great trip.
And you also had more than a couple surprises up your sleeve for me.
Hey everyone! I’m Dana and you’re watching Wanted Adventure Living Abroad.
A few weeks ago Mr. German Man and I visited Ireland for our first time, and it was spectacular.
But there were a few things that really shocked or surprised me, or just little observations
that I made.
So today, here are some of those.
We spent the first couple days of our trip in Dublin and then we rented a car and drove
around the countryside.
And the apartments in Dublin itself did look pretty similar to apartment buildings that
we’d seen in England and also some parts of Germany, but as soon as we got out into
the countryside one of the very first things that really shocked us about the
Republic of Ireland was the style of houses.
Because they really weren’t like anything that we’d ever seen around any other parts of Europe.
But the style did still look quite familiar to me.
And that’s because, oddly enough, and this is where the big shock comes in, a lot of
the houses in the countryside of Ireland, looked like American style houses.
You had these stand-alone houses on differing plot sizes, sometimes it was quite a big bit
of land, but then also sometimes they were right next to each other.
With big, long driveways, sometimes picket fences, basketball hoops.
And the houses themselves, just how they were built - the style of the actual building - really
looked like American houses, from the design to the front doors, the roofs, the window style.
It was really uncanny how much these homes looked like American houses.
For a moment, just looking at the houses, I could almost think that I was actually in
the U.S., but then I zoomed my field of view out and I saw sheep and cows and clothing
lines hanging in the backyard with clothes on them, and I was once more immediately back
in Ireland.
Another thing that I was definitely not expecting to see in Ireland was Lidl and Aldi grocery stores.
Which quick tangent with this one: one of my American friends visited me in Munich,
and she saw that there was an Aldi, and she was like: “Oh look!
You guys have Aldi,” because there are also Aldis in some parts of the U.S., so the brand
was familiar to her.
But it just really made me laugh the way she said it, like, “Hey!
You have an Aldi,” as though Germany had gotten Aldi from the U.S.
And so I was like: no, you have an Aldi, Aldi comes from here.
But yeah. Anyway, I was definitely not expecting to see either Lidl or Aldi in Ireland.
Another thing that shocked me about Ireland was the roads and the speed limit on said roads.
Ireland has these lovely, tiny little roads that really to my eyes look like they should
be one-ways streets...or maybe, like, one and half?
But definitely not two-lane roads.
But they were.
And in addition to being pretty narrow, they were also often surrounded by hedges and trees
on both sides, and super twisty and curvy, so you couldn’t always really see what was
coming around the next corner.
And the speed limit on these roads was eighty kilometers per hour in some places.
Oh my God, I could not believe it.
It made me chuckle when I saw a speed limit sign on one of those roads for 80 kilometers
per hour, and then afterwards there was another sign saying drive with care.
And I was like: um, I don’t know if those two things are compatible with each other.
I have no idea how people can manage to go 80 on those road, but they do!
The locals were definitely speeding along, zipping past us, apparently no problem for them.
But really, I don't know they do it!
But that was not the only sign that surprised me.
So, yeah, the speed limit signs looked the same as the speed limit signs in Germany.
It was a white circle with a red ring around it.
But then in Ireland there were also yellow, what I would call "American-looking" signs
on the road.
So you had this real mix of sign style Ireland.
Some signs looked like the ones that I’ve seen in the rest of Europe, and then some of the signs
looked like the ones I’m used to seeing in the U.S.
And then the way that English was used sometimes really shocked me too.
Words or phrases used in a totally different way that I’d never heard of before.
There were of course signs for house to let and mind the step, phrases that aren’t used
in the U.S., but I was already kind of used to those ones because I had seen and heard
them before when I was in England.
But there were also a lot of new ones for me in Ireland, too.
Like for example we saw a sign for a ramp.
Only what came afterwards was not what I would consider a ramp.
To me a ramp is something that really slants up quite sharply.
So you have a ramp when getting up into a moving van, for example.
So I was a little surprised when I saw this sign for a ramp in Ireland, but after it,
there was just what I would call a speed bump or sometimes in the U.S. I’ve also heard
these more gradual sloping ones called a speed hump.
That’s not a ramp!
And when driving out of a couple different towns, I saw signs reminding people to belt up,
which I thought was an interesting way to put it because in the U.S. I’ve always
heard it as buckle up not belt up.
Also on the road, I saw signs warning “no verge,” where there was no curb.
So I guess a curb is called a verge in Ireland.
And in front of a school I saw a sign showing where people could drop off their kids, but
instead of being called a drop off area, the sign called it a "set down" area.
Which to me was a really interesting way to put it.
I mean, I get it, but to me setting something down is usually, like, you’re holding a
glass, and then you set it down on the table.
Or with kids, maybe you’re holding a child and then you set them down on the ground.
But I’ve never heard it used as setting the child down at school or anything like that.
And while we were in Ireland I also learned of a whole new kind of golf.
We were driving through one town when I started seeing signs for pitch and putt, which I had
never heard of before and so at first I thought that perhaps pitch and putt was their way
of saying putt-putt golf.
But I quickly realized that was not the case when we drove by and, well, we just saw people
playing what looked like normal, everyday golf.
No fun themes or small little tricky shots to make.
It just looked to me like golf.
So then I thought that pitch and putt must simply be their term for golf.
But when I looked it up I learned that that’s not it either.
Pitch and putt, I went on to learn, is a smaller version of golf.
It’s a game of golf on a smaller scale and it’s apparently quite popular in Ireland.
So my question for you is: Have you ever been to Ireland?
What’s been your experience there?
And what are some of the craziest or most interesting road signs that you’ve ever seen?
Please let me know in the comments below.
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Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
So I guess a...
You have...a ramp.
We spent the first couple days of our trip in Ireland...that's not what I wanted to say.
Ireland! You are amazing, beautiful, lovely, what a great trip...and something else.
Ready? Ready? - Yes. - Yes! Okay!